Darkfall

by M. L. Spencer

  Renquist continued, “If you know Darien, then you know he already lost one child. How must he feel, knowing he is about to lose another?”

  Quin lowered his sword, his arms sagging to his sides. He opened his mouth to deny the man’s words but then stopped himself. Zavier Renquist never lied. He never had to. The truth was always much more painful.

  Quin swallowed heavily. “Who’s the mother?”

  “Darien’s wife. The Lightweaver, Azár.”

  Quin glared his hatred at Renquist, shaking his head in disgust. “You really are a demon, aren’t you? It’s not good enough for you to destroy a man. You have to destroy all that he is and all that he loves. And even then, you’re still not satisfied.” He regarded Renquist a long, searching moment. “You still haven’t explained why you need me.”

  “I don’t need you at all,” the Prime Warden responded in an ice-calm voice. “The strength of the gift inside you will be enough to suffice.”

  Quin’s stomach froze like a block of ice. He pressed himself against the wall as close as he could.

  The light of the lantern winked out. An encompassing blackness settled thickly around him, cold and terrifying. Quin couldn’t see the necrators, but he could feel them there, just on the edge of his senses. Gliding toward him through the darkness.

  Kyel’s hand trembled as he offered Naia a glass of water. She sat on a sofa, rubbing her temples, looking up at him with dark eyes that bore no degree of malice. Still, Kyel couldn’t drag his gaze away from the scars on her wrists, repulsed by the sight of them.

  “Explain yourself,” he said, crossing his arms.

  Naia took a sip of water then smiled patiently. “I’m not a darkmage, Kyel. I’m just a mage.” Her eyes were kind, compassionate. Just the way he remembered. “Bound or Unbound, it makes no difference. I’m still the same person you’ve always known. I haven’t changed.”

  “You broke Oath!” he growled, filled with both anger and fear. When—not if—Romana found out about her, the Queen would order Naia put to death. Kyel knew he couldn’t argue with that decision. The thought made him want to retch.

  Naia raised her eyebrows, fixing him with a disappointed look. “I did it to save you. Sareen was killing you—”

  Kyel raised his hand, cutting her off. She had condemned herself by her own words. The realization made him feel intensely sad. He blew out a protracted sigh, resenting the hell out of her. He would have to tell Swain. Sooner, rather than later.

  Naia was a mage, so the Citadel couldn’t contain her if she decided to walk out.

  Swain and Romana wouldn’t want to take that risk.

  34

  The Regret

  Darien sat his horse, Sayeed and his Zakai at his side, watching the gray light of dawn bleed slowly across the horizon.

  The morning was cold; he could feel the chill of his armor even through his padded gambeson. Dark clouds had moved in sometime during the night. Deep within their depths, Darien could see swarms of flickering lights. The lights seemed to wince in time to the pulsations of the magic field. The disturbances were entirely unnatural. The feel of them grated like sandpaper down his nerves.

  He stared out across the wide swath of denuded ground that stood between their ranks and Rothscard’s high walls. To the left of his Tanisars, the army of Bryn Calazar was amassed before Rothscard’s north gate, spread out across the grassland like a tumultuous black sea. At their rear, the horse warriors of the Jenn had collected in a vast, milling horde.

  Thin columns of smoke rose at intervals from Rothscard’s crenelated ramparts, from fires lit to heat oil and pitch and add an element of horror to the missiles of the trebuchets. Rothscard’s commanders had positioned the bulk of their defenses along the north wall in anticipation of an attack on the Lion’s Gate. The rest of the city’s battlements remained relatively undermanned. So far, his feint was working.

  A sonorous horn cry rose over the plain, followed by a disciplined stillness no army of the Rhen could ever rival. Amongst the Malikari legions, not a soul moved. There was no clatter of weapons, no rustle of armor.

  Just an unnerving silence that clung like a pall over an army of one hundred thousand men, a silence that thundered louder than any war drum ever could.

  The general of Bryn Calazar’s legions raised his sword. Upon his signal, every throat in the ranks behind him bellowed a whip-crack war cry.

  There was a pause.

  Then, faintly at first, deep-throated drums began tapping out a measured cadence. The drums gradually increased in tempo and intensity, the resonant booms rising in crescendo over the plain. The pulse of the drums continued, relentless and precise, rattling the air until Darien could feel their rumble in his chest. Another staccato shout bellowed from thousands of throats, then another, just off-beat. The resounding noise swelled to a climax, sustained there for minutes, then ceased with a final, thundering BOOM.

  Stillness followed.

  A lone war horn brayed languorously.

  Then, with a tremendous cry, the whole of the Malikari army broke forward at a run.

  The thunder of their charge was deafening. As the front ranks came within bowshot of the walls, dark arrow clouds began arcing downward, dropping soldiers at random. Trebuchets mounted to the ramparts joined in, hurling projectiles coated with Hell’s Fire that blazed like long-tailed comets across the sky, tearing great swaths through the advancing army. Men and women were set ablaze with sticky flames that spread quickly to devour anyone nearby.

  Ul-Calazi’s men raised ladders against the walls that were immediately flung back, only to be raised again. All the while the trebuchets worked tirelessly, hurling their blazing payloads at the attacking army. One of the siege engines erupted in flames, the men tending it hurled from the battlements. Another trebuchet exploded seconds later, taking its attending crew with it.

  A great cry rose from the battlefield, and then the dark host parted to admit an armored battering ram, covered and shielded. It was drawn by many teams of horses that were then unhitched before they were brought within bowshot. From there, men ran forward to push the ram up against the gate. Hot oil and flaming arrows flooded down from above like scalding rain. For every man that dropped, another took his place, the ram moving inexorably forward.

  Darien swept his gaze over the fortifications, noting the lack of soldiers on the eastern side of the city. As predicted, Swain had pulled the bulk of his forces from that section of wall, leaving its defenders spread few and thin.

  A resounding shout brought his attention back to the Lion’s Gate. A brilliant gold shield had insinuated itself between the ram and the gate, repulsing their efforts. The ram battered futilely against the shield, while Malikari infantry screamed their frustration at the unyielding walls. Flights of arrows splattered the ground, felling men like trees.

  Seeing that golden shield, Darien swore a curse. He’d hoped they’d left Kyel behind in Glen Farquist.

  His eyes scoured the battlements, searching. But the city was too far away to make out the faces of the men defending it. His frustration mounded by the second. It felt like the battle had reached a critical climax and was ready to implode. He looked at Sayeed.

  “Are you ready, Brother?” he asked.

  His First nodded. “We are ready.”

  “Then let’s have at it.”

  He kicked his boots into his horse’s sides, clutching the stallion’s mane in his fist. The animal surged forward, moving quickly up to speed, its hooves tearing up the grassland as it raced toward the city’s eastern wall. Sayeed’s horse labored alongside his own, his men fanned out behind them.

  Ahead, the few soldiers guarding the east gate noticed their approach and started scrambling. A few panicked and loosed their shafts early, which fell well short of hitting their marks. Darien drew his mount up and motioned his men to move into position at his sides. He glanced up and down the face of the wall, getting a better idea of the defenses. Urging his stallion into motion, he veered t
he horse toward the gate.

  As they came within range, groupings of arrows began arcing down from the walls. Darien deflected the shafts before they could find purchase. When they neared the gate, he slid off his horse, then sent the beast on its way with a slap on the hindquarters.

  He opened his mind to the magic field, gathering it in and holding it at ready. The field thrashed wildly, already tormented by the coming Reversal. He tightened his grip on it, despite its protest. The feel of it rubbed his nerves wrong, made his skin crawl.

  Darien concentrated on the masonry that lined the gate, feeling inside the stones and applying pressure to the weakest joints. Fine cracks erupted all along the wall, racing outward like spiders’ veins. Flakes of granite showered down. Above on the battlements, the soldiers realized their danger and retreated to the towers. Darien concentrated harder, bending all the brute force of his will into the effort. Chunks of stone sprayed from deep fissures, and a terrible groaning noise rumbled from deep within.

  Still, the wall stood.

  Darien reached for the Onslaught and used the Hellpower to augment his strength. Within seconds, he felt the blocks surrounding the gate start to shift. Huge chunks shivered and disappeared, leaving gaps in the stone arch. More stones shivered and then gave way, raining shards of crumbled rock onto the ground. Then, with a deafening roar, the entirety of the wall collapsed into a mounded berm of jagged stone.

  Darien’s men scrambled forward, leaping onto the rubble as arrows pelted down from the towers still standing. Darien deflected the arrows and scrambled after Sayeed into the breach. The debris shifted beneath him, the stones turning underfoot. It was harrowing minutes before he followed the Zakai off the scree. Skidding down the last few crumbling steps, Darien stumbled to a stop, then glanced around to get his bearings.

  They had breached the wall in a remote section of the city called the Regret. The quarter was populated mostly by criminals and unfortunates, its slums and back-waters burgeoning with black-market trade. Ahead, his Zakai patrolled the street, moving in zig-zag patterns from one side to the other, crossbows cocked, swords held ready. Darien walked behind them, his eyes scanning the long, dilapidated layers of shanties stacked one atop the other. Drying laundry flapped like colorful banners above the street, hanging from clothes lines that crisscrossed above. The smell of the place was a cloying combination of mold, wood smoke, and rot.

  Ahead, a disjointed collection of slum dwellers had amassed at the end of the street, armed with a variety of impromptu weapons. Seeing the advancing Zakai, the mob broke toward them.

  “No mercy,” Darien ordered. The Zakai sprinted forward. He ran after them, sword in hand, bringing the Onslaught to bear against Rothscard’s luckless defenders.

  Kyel tightened his grip on Thar’gon, nervous sweat trickling from his brow. Alexa stood at his side, clinging to his arm. He wasn’t sure whether she sought to steady him or steady herself. He was starting to have a hard time keeping focus. The power Thar’gon channeled was wild and difficult to control in the amounts Kyel found himself wielding. With the talisman’s aide, he’d been able to force the massive battering ram back from the gate, but only at great risk to his Oath. He hadn’t killed any of the attackers directly, but it had been too close for Kyel’s liking. He’d narrowly avoided immolating a siege engine, along with all of the men tending it.

  At his side, Nigel Swain stood shouting orders at the top of his lungs. There was frenzied fighting all along the battlements. Ladders were being raised from below, more and more each minute—too many to deal with all at once. Little by little, the Enemy was making their way onto the walls and expanding the footholds they gained. Up and down the ramparts, Enemy warriors were capturing the wall-mounted trebuchets and turning them against the city’s own defenses. Soon, Kyel found his attention pulled away from the gate, forced to defend Rothscard against flaming projectiles hurled from its own walls.

  A concussive blast exploded against the tower behind him.

  Kyel threw a ward up—probably the only thing that saved his life—but couldn’t expand it in time to save the soldiers on the tower who fell, engulfed in roiling flames. Kyel extinguished the flames but not the pain. The men continued to writhe and scream, while Kyel looked helplessly on. He couldn’t heal them without physical contact, and he was too occupied trying to prevent another such catastrophe.

  Alexa tugged harder on his arm. “It’s not enough!” she cried. “We are losing this battle! You must make a choice—between preserving your Oath or preserving the Rhen!”

  Angered, Kyel waved her off. She could be doing a lot more than she was, he thought, watching another tower erupt in flames, men thrown from its walls. Kyel cursed in frustration. He’d let that one get by him.

  At his side, Swain stiffened. “Something’s wrong,” he said, his voice barely audible over the rage of the battle

  Kyel shouted, “What?”

  Reaching up, the Prince ripped his helm off and moved to a crenel overlooking the plain. His face was covered in soot, except for branching streaks where sweat had eroded the grime. He finished his study of the battlefield, then turned back to Kyel with a look of alarm. “They’re not using Darien.”

  Kyel froze. He hadn’t noticed Darien’s glaring absence from the battle. The thought made his stomach wrench. “Then where is he?”

  “Gods be damned!”

  A merlon exploded beside him, flinging them backward. Swain recovered quickly, blood leaking from a gash over his eye.

  Another, larger, explosion rocked the city.

  Kyel stared out across the skyline, to where a wide plume of smoke rose and was spreading swiftly.

  Swain started swearing fluently. He shouted at his officers, “Pull everyone you can off the gate and get them down to the Regret! Gods’ whoring mother, they’ve already breached the fucking wall!”

  Darien backed away from the fires consuming the Regret’s layered shanties and turned to follow Sayeed into a narrow alley. The fires were spreading hungrily, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, much faster than he’d expected. Panicked residents fled before the roiling heat of the flames, taking to the streets—sometimes through doors, more often through windows. The morning had gone dark, the sky blackened by billowing smoke swarming with embers. The air was filled with horrendous shrieks, the kind that only came from the throats of the dying.

  A window broke overhead, raining shards of glass down right in front of him. A woman followed, streaming fire behind her and screaming all the way to the ground. Darien lurched backward, filled with revulsion, then turned to jog after Sayeed toward the street.

  At the intersection, Sayeed caught him by the arm and nodded toward another group of men collecting a ways up the street, a combination of city regulars and armed citizens. Darien wrapped a glowing shield around himself and motioned for Sayeed and his men to remain behind. Drinking in the Onslaught, he strode alone up the center of the street toward the gathered resistance. Seeing him haloed by an aura of green energy, the mob became chaotic. Most of the men started backing away. Others turned and bolted. Darien summoned a mist of magelight and sent it slithering ahead of him. More men fled. The rest broke toward him.

  Something cracked against his shield. Darien whirled to see a soldier reloading an arbalest, in the process of fighting with the crank. He threw the Hellpower mindlessly at the man. The soldier melted, dissolving with a sizzling hiss.

  Darien turned back to face the charging militia.

  Sayeed sprang in front of him and struck out at the first man, slicing his head off, then kicked another man back against the side of a building. He ducked an oncoming strike, then whirled to thrust his sword into his opponent’s chest.

  The rest of the attackers exploded in a rain of gore.

  Sayeed whirled to look at Darien with startled eyes.

  “Where is ul-Calazi?” Darien growled.

  He kicked the severed head out of his path, then glanced back in the direction of the breach. The Calazari reinf
orcements should have arrived minutes ago. Ahead, more blue-cloaked soldiers poured into the end of the street. Defenders worked feverishly to seal them off, erecting a barricade that consisted of any lose items they could scavenge from the surrounding buildings. Already, in the span of minutes, hundreds of soldiers had collected behind that barricade. Very soon, there would be thousands. For the first time, Darien started to doubt. He had brought only his warband to capture the Regret, but it would take more than that to keep control of it.

  He wondered if Ul-Calazi had abandoned him intentionally.

  Growing nervous, Darien scanned his surroundings, searching for a good defensive position they could retreat to. As an extra precaution, he summoned his array of necrators and sent them ranging ahead. He wasn’t sure they would be enough. But they were all he had.

  Kyel pulled his horse to a halt and swung down from its back, striding across the street toward the lowered portcullis that sealed off the Regret Quarter. Swain tossed his horse’s reins to a soldier and then ran over to take reports from a cluster of officers. Kyel slowed to a stop, daunted by the mayhem that reigned on the other side of the gate.

  Through the portcullis’ rusted bars, he could see that a large section of the Regret was already enveloped in flames, the smoke so thick it was impossible to estimate the extent of the destruction. A terrified mob had gathered on the other side of the portcullis. People were struggling to reach a small sally port beside the gate. The crowd surged violently. Panicked residents shoved and fought their way forward. People were starting to get trampled, while others were desperate enough to try climbing the portcullis despite iron spikes meant to discourage such activity.